Long-running trends towards increasing inequality between the rich and poor across Europe have been exacerbated by the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath. As employment opportunities for young people diminish and as the welfare state is pulled back, pathways to adulthood change and become more difficult to navigate.

Transitions to Adulthood Through Recession consists of a collection of papers by researchers from Britain, Norway, Germany, Portugal, Italy and Greece, locating young people's transitions to adulthood in their national social, economic and political contexts. It explores young adulthood with reference to generational continuity and change and intergenerational support. With a cross-national comparative framework, this volume highlights the importance of variations in structural contexts for young people's transitions.

Bringing together authors across sub-disciplines such as the sociology of youth, family and kinship, class and inequality and life-course studies, Transitions to Adulthood Through Recession will appeal to academic social scientists as well as final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as political science, sociology, youth studies, social policy, anthropology and psychology; and a wider public readership.

About the Author
Sarah Irwin is Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, UK. Ann Nilsen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Reviews

Against the background of the global financial crisis which has left a legacy of political turmoil and a populist surge across Europe, this book could not be more timely. The contributors offer the reader a comparative understanding of youth inequalities in difficult times. Labour market, family transitions and intergenerational relationships are described and explained from a life course perspective and firmly located in an era of increasing social inequality. The editors are to be commended on pulling together such an excellent collection.

Fiona Devine, Head of Alliance Manchester Business School and Professor of Sociology at The University of Manchester, UK

Social change is complicated! This book brilliantly shows and explains how a new generation of young Europeans are living through the consequences of the global financial crisis, recalibrating their expectations and optimising their resources in ways that compound inequality. Empirically robust, theoretically nuanced and rooted in a range of European contexts, this is state of the art youth studies, providing a sense of how we got into this situation, offering the starting point for navigating a more socially just future.

Rachel Thomson, Professor of Childhood & Youth Studies, University of Sussex, UK

Book Information
ISBN 9780367355074
Author Sarah Irwin
Format Paperback
Page Count 204
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 453g